


Lay Your Woes Into the Fire

by sweeterthankarma



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Background Hernando Fuentes & Lito Rodriguez & Daniela Velasquez, Background Hernando Fuentes/Lito Rodriguez, Background Riley Blue/Will Gorski, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: Lito shouldn’t be crying. And yet, he is.Sometimes his emotions scare him.There’s a softness in the air beside him suddenly, a bleach blond light with a streak of blue, a gentle hand on his wrist. Lito recognizes her immediately.“I know how that feels.”
Relationships: Lito Rodriguez & The Cluster, Riley Blue & Lito Rodriguez
Comments: 20
Kudos: 64





	Lay Your Woes Into the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "Oceans" by Ry X and Ólafur Arnalds.

Lito has always been good at expressing his emotions. He’s an actor, after all, so it’s his job to do so, to be in tune with sides of him that he didn’t know existed until reading a certain script and stepping into a character’s mindset. That’s something that gets a lot easier to do once he gets fully accustomed to being a sensate, too. 

But more than that, the thrill of vehemence runs in his blood. He finds that he’s always had more inside of him than he expected, feelings about feelings about feelings and of course, plenty of deep, monumental moments that shake him to his very core every so often. 

Lito remembers sobbing on the bathroom floor, tears falling down his cheeks and dripping onto the tile, all over some mundane thing he’d forget about later. He remembers so strongly, so fiercely, like it was yesterday, just as he remembers blowing out his birthday candles while his family watched on, the love in their eyes overflowing in his heart. He’s used to tears, real and fake, though he’d hardly say acting is fake. It’s just a different version of real. 

When Lito cries, Nomi holds his hand and says she understands, and he knows she does but she’s stronger than him, her walls built up stronger and taller, mortar honed and mastered to be fit for a creature only of her strength. She’s limitless, brazen, unafraid now after years of allowing fear to be her only friend. Lito wishes he could be like her.

But he’s not, because he’s been crying for no reason lately, overwhelmed with emotion, struck by the truth of the good and the bad of everything he’s ever done and been and seen, and the massiveness of it all suddenly seems tower over him, out of nowhere and impossible to control. 

Sun tells him that he doesn’t need to cry, that everything is okay, more than okay. Will echoes the sentiment. Lito knows this is true, knows there’s logic in their reasoning, but he can’t help his feelings. Sun is consistent, practical almost ruthlessly so, and she doesn’t dwell in her emotions, her fear, or in anything that doesn’t better her as a person. Lito doesn’t know how to do that, even though her own skills are ingrained in his own psycellium. She tries to help, at least, and in some ways, she does, just by being there. 

Will does too, and at least he’s a little less stoic than her. He’d weeped last week on the anniversary of his father’s death, spent the whole day sobbing into his pillows and Riley’s arms—  and Capheus’s too, who took the day off from work just to provide support and a clearer mind to slip into when it all became too much. He claimed he had a stomach ache too, and sure, he did a little, but they all know that wasn’t the real reason he ditched his responsibilities. He’s the most positive, the most resilient of all of them, and they need him the most sometimes. 

Capheus is asleep now though, as Lito cries in the middle of the night. He’s been doing this a lot lately. He isn’t quite sure why. He’s happy, happier than he has been in a long time, and his list of complaints only holds the fact that he sprained a muscle in his arm while working out this afternoon and that there was a bit too much arugula in his salad for his taste. 

Still, he sits on the balcony and weeps. He’s alone, on the terrace of Daniela’s room since she’d fallen asleep at the foot of his and Hernando’s bed and neither of them had the heart to move her when she had slept so peacefully, even if their legs had to stay bunched tight under the covers to keep her comfortable.

Lito thinks of Hernando, of the love of his life with the gleaming ring on his finger, the man he’s been so fortunate to love and even more fortunate to have love him back. He thinks of Daniela, sweet and generous and unabashed in her enthusiastic, platonic devotion, unlike anyone else he’s ever met. Lito adores her, adores both of them so much it almost hurts, and he knows they adore him in the same way. 

So he shouldn’t be crying. And yet, he is. 

Sometimes his emotions scare him.

There’s a softness in the air beside him suddenly, a bleach blond light with a streak of blue, a gentle hand on his wrist. Lito recognizes her immediately. 

“I know how that feels,” Riley says, or maybe just thinks. Her words don’t make much sound, but Lito hears her. Knows that she does understand.

Sometimes he feels the grief from her, but it’s different, more passive, a backseat to her joy. Regardless, her grief makes sense. His doesn’t.

“That’s not true,” Riley says, aloud this time. She’s both in his head and beside him, watching him. There’s no judgment in her eyes, not even a trace of concern, just mere understanding. “You’ve lost things too.”

Of course, she’s right. She’s right again when she props herself against the railing of the balcony and takes his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers loosely before saying, “it’s okay to feel this way. Wouldn’t you rather feel too much than too little?”

And  _ of course, _ he would. 

“Blame it on being a sensate if you need to,” she says with a slight, casual shrug. “Lots of hormones, chemicals mixing, science factors. Ask Kala for more information on it, she knows all about it.”

A grey mist passes beyond the crescent moon high in the sky. Lito breathes in, breathes out once the shine of it is visible again. The tears are gone now, dried, barely a memory as the wind rushes against his skin. Riley smiles at him then, just a slight upward tilt of the corners of her mouth, but it’s enough for Lito to feel in his own cheeks, to mirror the expression back at her. 

“I don’t need to,” he says, “I trust you.”

* * *

  
  
It’s a few weeks later when Riley has a panic attack of her own. It’s the first time she’s had one in over two years and it hits her hard and fast, familiar in the way that it twists in her gut and renders her nearly immobile. Lito is at her side instantly, only seconds after Will is, though he doesn’t even immediately know where he’s going when he feels his spirit move away from Mexico City and into someplace different. Cooler. The air conditioning is on in Chicago, remedying the sticky heat of a restaurant bathroom that Riley rushes out of, moving onto the streets and into the backseat of Will’s car.

Will knows instantly how to calm her down, how to sit with her close but not too close, how to run his fingers along the small of her back until her breathing steadies, and Lito does too, given their shared knowledge and all. He likes to think they have shared wisdom too, that everything Riley knows about how to get through moments like this lives in his own mind too, and thus can be offered to her when she draws a blank.

“You’re safe,” is what Lito tells her, knowing that she is. Will is with her, both in person and always spiritually, too, nearly a part of her given how close they are. And Wolfgang may be back in Germany but there’s no doubt in any of their minds that he’d hop on the next flight to Chicago and be by her side, fighting for her or fighting with her before she even asks him to. 

So when Lito says “I’ve got you,” Riley knows that what he really means is  _ “we’ve  _ got you.” And though there’s not a day that goes by where she forgets this, it’s nice to have a verbal reminder. 

Still, it’s hard to stop the full body sweat she’s broken into, to calm her shaky hands even though Kala’s arrived now too, offering tea and a sympathetic smile.

Lito takes it from her, drinks it so Riley can taste it without fear of shattering the mug. It’s a sweet gesture, one that earns a confused glance from Kala at first, all furrowed dark eyebrows and pursed lips, but then a sweeping sense of understanding that flickers quick and appreciative across her face. 

“This is all just chemicals, remember?” Lito reminds Riley after Will wipes a stray tear away from her flushed, clammy cheek. “Ask Kala.”

A hint of a smile crosses Riley’s face, just barely there. Her hands squeeze Lito and Will’s, nails digging into flesh, but they don’t mind, just as Kala doesn’t mind diving into discussion. She says something about electrons and neurons, something Lito should at least understand a little of given his last short film involved a love interest who was a chemistry teacher, but he just shrugs when Will gives him a quizzical look after Kala pronounces a long, heavily accented piece of vocabulary.

“No reason to be afraid of your emotions, right?” Lito says once Kala’s reached the end of her lesson, and maybe it’s the easy tone of her words, the car AC finally beginning to crank on, or the cool cloth that Nomi presses wordlessly to Riley’s neck without even making her entrance known, but he feels her relax. 

“And you trust me?” he asks, quoting her own words. He knows she’ll catch onto it. She does, and nods. 

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi and talk about Sense8 with me in the comments or at my Tumblr blog [here.](https://sweeterthankarma.tumblr.com/)


End file.
